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Book of Grudges

Burlok is dead, its remains smouldering in ashes. Kaja the dwarven Rune Priest stands ‘tall’ and looks around. She has a choice of new homes, aside from Karak-Azgal where the evil Ailil bounces on her disk.

Ok, I’ll prob move her to Karak Eight Peaks on monday. No idea what the new guild is doing, but these days I’m more of a soloer. And it sounded like a fun server on saturday.

RP server closures are sad to me, because they offer something that you just don’t find elsewhere. But WAR demands on numbers, and equality. And the numbers are so LOW on the RP servers, that these moves are inevitable. And wherever I go, I’ll be using Flimgoblin’s awesome new RP addon.

Hrrm, the move is on the same day my 6-month sub runs out. I was going to take a few weeks break from the game and then continue playing and move any new WAR commentary to my more general blog: Nerf the Cat. Yes folks, after a new breath of life for the Age of Blogging, the Book of Grudges is most definitely coming to an end.

It shows how things have progressed in 7 months. I’ve gone from uber-excited about every announcement, to slightly cynical and needing proof of things. I gave up on end-game and enjoyed the simplicity of tiers 1 and 2, and could play those all the time! I look forward to the Land of the Dead ‘expansion’ stuff. But I miss my guild, my friends, my server – and let’s face it, Book of Grudges is in no way as good as it was when I shared duties with Spinks and Hawley.

I am determined to keep an eye on WAR, I hope I enjoy my new server when I get back to playing there. It’s going to be a bit weird to make sure my friends (whose subs have run out) get to the same server. I’m not even sure it’s possible, so that will be seriously upsetting for all of us. I even got some great ideas for WAR blog posts at the pub gathering over the weekend. Those posts will be on Nerf the Cat, however. Not here.

Thanks to all for reading, commenting, visiting and keeping us in the feed-reader! It’s definitely appreciated.

To those that came to the pub yesterday and braved meeting me & Spinks as well as fellow players, thanks! I had a really great time, and it reminded me how much MMO players can sometimes have in common (in one case almost freakishly so, but in a comedic way).

Will write more soon. Hear from Warhammer Alliance over twitter that Mythic apparently care enough about Europe to start working on equality of marketing and give-away codes. They didn’t send any for our fan-run pub gathering, though! They’ll get there, in another few months.

Shame no-one from GOA could make it. Shame more people didn’t come. But, having said that, was truly glad to be able to chat to those who did in-depth, because they were all remarkably interesting people.

Who knows? When the dust settles and I’m home, I may consider it more.

I’ve been neglecting my blogs, and as I’ve just compiled some links for Nerf the Cat later in the week, here’s the WAR-related ones I’ve been checking out amongst others:

Werit summarises info from the Land of the Dead video, neatly and succintly and it gave me just enough of a taster to go watch the video, since I’m a little distrustful of marketing at the moment! It’s nearly June too…

I’ll really miss the colourful and sensible diagrams and dots from Breakfast at WAR, so here’s Pancakez’ view on the old chestnut of Rock, Paper, Scissors. It’s plainly awesome.

Frustration at the endgame continues with Bootae’s comments on his recent experiences at trying to get into a city siege and what happened. I have to say, I’m still not tempted to try city sieges, I enjoy the early tiers too much these days.

Before WAR launched, there was speculation about population balances and what would happen when one side was frankly overpowered. Werit returns to look at what’s happened on his server, Averheim and it seems players do prefer to be overpowered. Perhaps not surprising, but still somehow revealing.

Podcasts, podcasts – Stonetroll Certified and Warhammer Alliance have new podcasts out, both worthy of being in your list. (OK, so due to twitter I know the WHA one is due out very soon, but keep an eye on their site, it’ll be worth it and has a special guest!)

Snafzg, over at The Greenskin, shows us exactly how and why his blog hit 1 million views with an awesome screenshot of Destruction standing in an orderly queue for a Live Event kill task. I ‘awwed’ at them. So cute, and so far from being chaotic, eh?

There’s no getting out of this one, the decrease in WAR blogs, highlighted by Blame the Healer. At some point soon, I’ll also be moving my main blogging over to my ‘catch-all’ blog, but I’ll still be peppering it with WAR posts and speculations… for me it’s just too hard to keep two blogs going with any sort of quality control!

Bootae provides my favourite headline for a while, raising the issues of how the game could possibly spread players out across zones to avoid 10+ warbands all going after the same goals. I still think bringing in the other Cities would have helped with this somewhat, but truthfully we as players often choose easy kills/keep takes over the more disputed ones, so it’s definitely one of WAR’s problems. He also touches on the recent Winds of Change controversy, which has been picked up by many many blogs, and which I read in quiet disbelief. Snafzg sums it up on Massively, Skar also keeps me up-to-date, and Roo gives the subsequent nerdrage it’s own made-up word. Awesome.

On a lighter and more impressive note, Gaarawarr continues his insane PQ trawl which makes for a fantastic read. I wish I’d thought of it! This time he’s at the home of the elves (ok, so now I’m glad I didn’t think of it…)

And back to The Greenskin for my final link of the day. Snafzg has decided to start a semi-regular column about what he’d do if he were Mark Jacobs. It’s a useful call for constructive criticism and an interesting read. The first article covers gear grinding, something close to all our hearts.

Phew, sorry for the wordiness, it’s been a while I know. There’s a lot of great stuff still being done in WAR and written about WAR, so keep an eye on it all! Later this week I’ll be back to discuss more about the London get-together where me & Spinks hope we get to meet many of you and take lots of photos!

I’ve been remiss in my linking. I know that, this blog hasn’t always been at the forefront of my mind. But I do still read up everything people are contributing about WAR, and the various forums, and for that reason my WCPI contribution for this ‘period’ can only be Warhammer Alliance.

I’ve had some issues with Warhammer Alliance in the past, I don’t think we need to go into those. But, the site has truly become a fan haven, and has gone from strength to strength in terms of community involvement, and producing original content that truly worth reading. It’s become an information hub more than a series of forums. And its front page is now one of my primary stops on the net, and I read all the articles before I even consider heading to the forums.

Enough niceness, eh? Bloggers, and in can be assumed others in the community, are testing out other games until WAR gets fixed or until the Land of the Dead brings people back to the game. Hell, it’s what I’m doing. I’m even sometimes choosing grinding in LotRO over what it plainly fun about WAR – Tier 1 and an alt on many nights. People are doubting their subscriptions.

And Mythic? Mythic are tied to their desks trying to fix stuff and bring in new stuff that will need fixing with their lesser numbers in QA and elsewhere. The game needs these fixes and changes, and they’ve been promised to us. A number of people I know are pretty excited about Land of the Dead but not really bothered about much before, so this ‘live expansion’ is very important to Mythic, don’t mistake that. If it all goes wrong, it might be the end of a number of subs on both sides of the pond. The community is flagging a little and could do with pepping up.

Not heard of Paul visiting many blogs recently, or even updating his own. And that’s the problem with community involvement, once you start it, people expect it to continue. I expect these luminaries of Mythic to be doing all they used to do, marketing-wise, even when it’s unfeasible from a grander scale. But I’m sure there will be a ramp-up in community chatter and involvement with the Land of the Dead, there needs to be!

I’m finding WAR quite suitable for a casual game, but that also means if something more interesting comes up, WAR gets dropped for the night. I still enjoy the game when I play it, but even that’s somewhat because I’ve disengaged myself from the endgame, I’ve heard too much about it being unsatisfying, and I know I enjoy sleeping, so I don’t go to city sieges or defences, preferring to try new characters and play them through Tiers 1 and 2, safe in the knowledge I have my preferred char at rank 40 just in case I need a top level character.

WAR needs enthusiasm. It needs to be fun. If you’re not enjoying it, try alting, or play another game and keep your eye on info about the ‘expansion’.

It’s been a while since I linked to some of the stories that have kept me amused/captivated and so here’s a catch-up. They’re not all brand new, but that doesn’t mean you caught them or that they’re any less good.

Gaarawarr’s epic PQ trawl is a cautionary tale in madness, but reading it actually made me want to give it a shot. He’s also updated his armour guide to include all the new tokens etc.

Regis is RIGHT, we need recruit-a-friend in the EU. In fact, things have been trundling along fairly quietly on the ol’ EU vs US front, so sometimes it’s worth sitting back and reflecting on how the different treatment has worked out. In some ways it’s ok, but in terms of marketing, Mythic is definitely in front.

Over at Incoming Pull, you can read about WAR’s swan song (ie. city sieges and more disappointment in the game’s end’game)

Snafz gives us a definitive token cost list and reminds us to go read Tome of Knowledge and all the work over there put in about the Land of the Dead expansion. It’s neatly summarised, and a fantastic resource.

And finally, over at Lagwar, there’s more misery at 1.2.1, listing bugs and problems that this patch has introduced to the game. I get the feeling I’d have experienced more of them if me and Spinks hadn’t been playing extremely casually and not really spending a huge amount of time in the game.

Today marks the launch of patch 1.2.1 on the American servers, which means it’ll be heading our way soon. I’ve not written all that much about it, because I’ve found it all a little overwhelming, but I know it heralds some big and important changes.

Keep upgrading should prove an interesting addition that’ll add some flavour to open RvR at higher levels and also provide some incentive for holding a keep for longer. I hope it works as planned, it sounds like some much-needed extra dimensions will be in-game shortly.

The Beyond the Sands live event launches with 1.2.1. I want to kill undead things, so I look forward to it. Goggles, however, will ruin my hair!

There’s a lot of general improvements, to the UI, to combat responsiveness and to the luck factor (somewhat), by the introduction of a token system of medallions for RvR. I really look forward to seeing how many medallions I can earn in an evening of RvR (and yes, I will take my r40 Rune Priest out for this test) and what I can buy for them. And of course, there’s the new Gates of Ekrund ‘arena’ (6v6 ranks 19-24), it sounds cool, but also scares me a bit, because I’m notoriously nervous about my abilities – but I know people really can’t wait for this, and I’m extremely interested in how it goes, I imagine it’ll be a surefire hit and people will always want an alt in these levels to do this (or to halt the xp gain if they could).

And I know all the class tweaks and changes will take some getting used to. But it marks yet another stage of Mythic taking on criticism and comment and working the game to make improvements all the time. And because of that, there’s only really one thing to say…